Mal Fletcher reports on the technologies you & your organisation can't afford to ignore.

While augmented reality adds a 3D picture or graphic to our real-world sight, virtual reality invites us to ignore reality, to step into an artificially constructed 3D environment.

VR relies on haptic technology - that is, technology that fools the human senses. Now quite a few years old, VR tools are still best at playing tricks with our senses of sight, sound and, to a lesser degree, touch.

The latter is improving, as technologists experiment with ways of turning the vibrations that give rise to tactile sensations into binary code. This will enable touch to be communicated between computers and thus shared with remote users.

Designers are now also working to emulate the senses of smell and taste. Full capability in this area may be a little way off yet, but it would be unwise to bet against it becoming a consumer option within the next five years.

Once the goal of going fully haptic is achieved, VR will impact many aspects of how we work, play and live.

Even with today's technology, VR will change education, providing new opportunities for remote learning - teacher in one location, students in another - and collaborative learning, with pupils researching problems together over vast distances.

In the media and entertainment space, VR will provide for immersive newscasts which will transform audience members into virtual eye-witnesses to history.

It will also add another dimension to the world of movie-making. Imagine being able to "feel" the atmosphere in a room during a tense murder scene, or the sensation of rapid descent with a parachuting action hero - with all of one's senses in play.

VR will become an important tool for business, too, not least because of its potential for immersive marketing, client relations and training.

Airlines will offer virtual samples of in-flight services and, as fully haptic tools arrive, restaurants will market their wares with taste-and-smell online menu samples.

Customer relations departments in department stores will invite clients to use VR to pinpoint product faults in very specific ways.

Business conferencing will see remote delegates joining in-house guests for that big keynote or marketing announcement. Executive coaches will use virtual reality to simulate potential problem scenarios, creating immersive training opportunities.

Will VR replace the need for physical interaction, in real space? Absolutely not - in fact the opposite will be true. The greater our engagement with virtual, the more will be our perceived need for real contact. High-tech always gives rise to a greater hunger for high-touch.

Design and manufacturing will benefit hugely from VR's ability to simulate new products in three dimensions before they are built.